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Lady HENRIETTA SHIMMERS' long-talked-of Dance came off yesterday
evening, at her _recherche_ little mansion in North-west Bayswater, and
was a great success. A handsome second-hand slip of Dutch carpet was
laid down on the pavement outside the Hall-door, and from an early hour
in the afternoon afforded a theme for much favourable comment in the
immediate neighbourhood. The staircase had been, with the aid of
half-a-dozen night-lights and a profusion of homemade paper flowers,
turned into a perfect fairyland, the illusion becoming the more perfect
the further the spectator receded. The one purple and green Hungarian,
who attended with his trombone to represent that celebrated band of
musicians, supplied the dance music with much spirit, while those
noted _viveurs_, capable of expressing an opinion on the subject of
supper, declare that the South-American tinned oysters, and the
seventeen-shilling Roumanian champagne, with which they washed
them down, were both, in their way, respectively, in the shape of
refreshment, quite the most remarkable things they had met with
anywhere this season. The company was select and distinguished.
Mrs. JIPPLING, who brought her two chubby-faced, pretty daughters, both
in ditch-water-coloured cotton, was a simple blaze of Birmingham paste
and green-glass emeralds, and with her _pompadour_ of yellow satin bed
curtain, trimmed with _chiffons_ of scarlet bell-ropes, looped up
tastefully with bunches of _cordons d'onions d'Espagne a la
blanchisseuse_, was the centre of pleasurable astonishment wherever she
went. LADY PICKOVER also created quite a sensation, being a perfect
dream in orange worsted. Miss MUGALLOW attracted a good deal of notice,
wearing the celebrated heavily enamelled plated family Holly-hocks, and
several _debutantes_ in bright arsenical Emerald Green, who had not much
to recommend them in the way of good looks, came in for a fair amount of
cynically disagreeable comment. The dance terminated at an early hour in
the morning, it being eventually brought to a conclusion by a little
riot in the hall, caused by the linkman (who, owing to his potations,
had not been very steady after midnight) endeavouring to make off with
the hat-and-umbrella-stand, a feat which brought the police on to the
premises with a suggestion, that "as things seemed getting a bit lively
inside, perhaps the concern had better come to a finish." The
proceedings shortly after this, were brought to an abrupt conclusion.
[Illustration: STATE OF MARKETS ILLUSTRATED.